Space tourism… to Mars?

The world’s first space tourist, Dennis Tito, has unveiled plans to send a manned mission to Mars and back, targeting a launch date less than five years away. The two space travelers wouldn’t land on the Red Planet — or even enter its orbit — just fly through the vicinity and back, a trajectory Tito said would take 501 days, thanks to a rare planetary alignment. The US space agency has aimed for the 2030s in its vague projections for a manned mission to Mars, and is focusing in the shorter term on sending robots, like the Curiosity rover that landed with much fanfare last summer. Tito’s non-profit Inspiration Mars, by contrast, is starting essentially from scratch, with neither a vehicle nor a clear source of funding. Still, the mission is “achievable,” insisted Taber MacCallum, the foundation’s chief technology officer and the head of Paragon Space Development Corporation...